On rolling hills overlooking the Kaipara Harbour, one millionaire’s vision of exotic animals coexisting with monumental contemporary art has been realised. Gabi Lardies pays a visit.

I thought I was so smart and so cheeky or maybe very stupid from sun exposure when I wrote “are exotic animals art?” in my red 3B1 notebook. It was a glaring hot day, and after an hour of driving, I was at Gibbs Farm, the private sculpture park on rolling hills which overlooks the Kaipara Harbour. It’s one of those places I’ve never quite got around to visiting, though I’ve spied the pop-art styled giant piece of corrugated iron visible from the road and heard plenty of rumours and reckons about its owner, rich-lister and arts philanthropist Alan Gibbs. When I arrived, a man sporting gumboots and a mullet glanced at my digital ticket and handed me a little guidebook. Then I, along with plenty of people dressed as if ready for a big tramp, was left to my own devices in the sprawling property.

Luckily, the sculptures here are monumental, so all you have to do is follow them like a breadcrumb trail. There are 23 listed in the guide book, about a third of them by New Zealand artists. The rest are from China, the US, England, France, the Netherlands and South Africa. The big international names here include Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt and Anish Kapoor. What’s special about the artworks is that they’ve been commissioned specifically for where they sit and that the scale, location and surely the budgets have encouraged artists to realise significant (important and big) works. It is not unlike the internationally renowned Upstate New York sculpture park Storm King, which has reigned supreme in the world of large-scale sculpture for 60 years. Though there are not as many works at Gibbs, they are comparable to and sometimes surpass works at Storm King by the same artist (in the case of the Serra, Daniel Buren and George Rickey). Amazing what money can do.

Despite all of this, everyone I mention my visit to has said, “Oh! I’ve always wanted to go!” – meaning they have not. It’s not exactly easy to go to Gibbs Farm – it’s only open to the public on select days throughout the year, usually once a month, and you have to book in advance. Though it’s apparently possible to book directly though their website at no cost, what usually happens is that institutions and charities sell tickets as a fundraiser. The ticket I acquired was $120 and a fundraiser for the Auckland Theatre Company. Also – please don’t stop reading – it is quite a drive to get there. Ideally you’d take a picnic lunch and sunblock and spend the better part of a day.

Anyway, there I was with my notebook and my guidebook and my camera watching one giraffe eat leaves off a pole and another standing tall in the distance. I had a good view of the fountain (which strangely does not feature on the guidebook or website) and so decided to take an excellent photo of the giraffes among the art. What I didn’t know until days later is that the tall giraffe at the back is actually made of corrugated iron. It’s the work of Jeff Thomson, an artist who grew up in Castor Bay on Auckland’s North Shore and is a graduate of the University of Auckland’s art school Elam. Thomson is known for his work in corrugated iron, that ubiquitous building material, particularly life-sized or bigger sculptures of animals – cows, elephants, dogs, butterflies and one very iconic corrugated-iron-clad 1974 Holden Kingswood which he drove around for three years (now kept safe by Te Papa). If you’re thinking it all sounds a bit like the Taihape boot, it’s because he made that too. The corrugated iron elephant gateway at the entrance to Auckland Zoo is his, as is the five-metre-tall human head in Beckenham, Christchurch. Chances are, if you see an animal made of corrugated iron, it comes from his workshop in Helensville. The giraffe, which is about six metres tall, was completed in 2012 and stands right by the giraffe enclosure.

Come to think of it, why are there giraffes at the sculpture park in the first place? They’re not alone – there are also several species of big cattle with big horns including bison and water buffalo, heaps of alpaca and babydoll sheep who rub up against the Serra and have created a patina along its bottom, emus, swans, peacocks and a few wandering pūkeko. It’s all above board – the farm is a registered zoo. But why? In a 2018 issue of Art Collector magazine, Gibbs explains: “The hills and the animals interact with the art in a manner that is unique to The Farm”. Another article on the farm states that animals are ”chosen for their looks”, and reportedly Gibbs once said in a television interview that the animals were chosen solely for the way they complement the artworks. It’s not common to place animals alongside monumental pieces of art, but in a private collection, you can do what you like. The roaming ones certainly leave a lot of droppings.

The animals aren’t the only rub at the farm. Though it’s a sunny day and everything is lovely, one source of the money that made this all possible has been described as coming from the “neoliberal finance coup” of the late 20th century in New Zealand. When the government privatised state-owned enterprise Telecom, Gibbs was there to take it off their hands. Three years later, he and his business partner Trevor Farmer sold about half their shares, which covered their initial investment and put $56 million profit in their pockets, while still keeping $170 million worth of shares. “There it was: the greatest coup of my business career, the chance to make serious money,” said Gibbs, reflecting on it later. 

The Gibbs family is also intertwined in the political right, particularly libertarianism. Alan Gibbs supported Roger Douglas’s neoliberal financial reforms of the late 1980s and then helped establish the Act Party. He has continued to be a regular donor. Now, his New York-based daughter, Debbie Gibbs, is the chair of the Atlas Network’s board of directors. In the past year, Atlas’s influence in New Zealand has been noted as a point of concern by Labour and Te Pāti Māori. While groups like the Taxpayers’ Union are open about being members and describe it as a group of “free-market thinktanks around the world”, Labour’s Willie Jackson described Atlas as “an international far-right thinktank whose extreme policy platform seeks to attack public servants, push for radical privatisation, dismantle regulation protecting workers and their environment, and champions landlords over renters” in a parliamentary debate in 2024. For at least some of the artists and audiences at Gibbs Farm, these alignments must be uneasy.

I would hate to imply that people visit Gibbs Farm for the content, but visitors often had their phones in front of their faces, experiencing the artworks through their screen even though they were right there in front of them. The sculptures certainly photograph well, but I think call out for a more involved engagement. The white, flame-like shape of Jacob’s Ladder by Gerry Judah is made entirely of stacked steel tubing. It twists from the ground up to the sky, so that as you walk around it, the sculpture takes on different shapes and opacities. Sometimes, the hills behind it are seen like slats through the tubing, other times the structure appears solid or its faces overlap. But people tended to walk close to it from one direction, take a photo and move on. 

Similarly, Anish Kapoor’s red trumpet-like sculpture, Dismemberment, Site 1, is not exactly static. It is made up of a 75-metre-long panelled PVC membrane which is stretched between two steel rings, each eight metres wide. Up close, the ends resemble some sort of gaping mouth or wound. The shape, and its positioning across a ridge, implies that wind, or air, is intended to travel through, and with that, sound. The day I visit it is still. People approach with trepidation, have a look inside and move on. I linger. There is a sign saying not to climb on the work, but none saying not to touch it. It’s industrially made to withstand the elements and it looks strong. I tap on the edge of the steel. The whole sculpture rings out, echoing. 

Another jewel of the farm’s crown is Richard Serra’s Te Tuhirangi Contour. It is made of 56 rusted steel plates six metres tall forming a curving, tilted wall that traces a contour line across the land. Richard Serra is one of the most significant artists of his generation, famous for large-scale, site-specific sculptures just like this one. Serra’s been quoted as saying that Gibbs told him “I don’t want any wimpy piece in the landscape” and so this work is not small. I have seen many, many artistic photos of this piece on social media over the years. Photos taken from buzzy angles or that crop it to a curve or a shadow. I wish I hadn’t seen them, so that I could experience the work from my own perspective, rather than have had those in the back of my mind.

Walking along the contour, it was impossible not to notice piles of animal poo left behind, as well as what looked like an animal track right up against the sculpture. There were a few clumps of wool on the ground and the bottom metre or so looked like animals had been gently brushing up against it on their travels. Over on the facing hill, a herd of alpaca grazed. It seemed strange, this heavy, minimalist sculpture in an idyllic pastoral setting. Serra was trying to make me think about space, embodiment, materials, gravity through an imposing sculpture, but just over there some cuties were munching grass. Is this the pairing Gibbs was after?

Even if Gibbs’ penchant for exotic animals is a bit odd (not to mention the replica western town somewhere in the private area of the grounds), and his fortune and politics questionable, the art speaks to his motivation to create an important collection of major works from local and international artists. By the time he bought the land for the farm, he had already been collecting art for 30 years. The scale of commissions like this almost always comes from public institutions for a public space or temporary exhibition. A place like Gibbs Farm is rare. It’s worth a visit, even if you mistake art for animal.